FORT WORTH, Texas — Once upon a time, in a galaxy far away, professional quarterbacks didn’t arrive at training camp’s front porch “emotionally drained.” Just didn’t happen.

Can you imagine Johnny Unitas being “emotionally drained?” Y.A. Tittle? Roger Staubach? Call them that to their face and they’d have blackened somebody’s eye.
Football was a tough game for tough men. Sure, there might be some emotional and physical carnage to deal with at the end of a long, difficult season — Troy Aikman after the Dallas Cowboys won Super Bowl XXX, for instance — but not the week before training camp kicks off.
“Emotionally drained” should be a state of mind reserved for harried movie stars, Barbara Walters’ interviewees and obsessing cooking-show chefs.
Undoubtedly then, Cowboys fans must feel at least a tinge of uneasiness to hear that Tony Romo will open camp this week feeling “emotionally drained” before he even takes his first snap in practice.
The fact that this news comes to us via People.com — the online version of “People” magazine — is ominous in and of itself. As Bill Parcells once warned Romo in his own inimitable way, don’t be a “celebrity quarterback.” As far as Parcells was concerned, the only time his quarterback should make “People” was in the obit pages.
Obviously, Parcells is gone and that cautionary warning fell on deaf ears.
The good news is, the busy celebrity off-season is behind Romo. Perhaps — keep your fingers crossed — he can actually find some solace, some peace and quiet, in simply playing football.
Not that Romo has given any indication that peace and quiet or a little less limelight is what he’s looking for; on the contrary, he seeks the spotlight like a rat smells cheese.
Well-publicized “impromptu” karaoke sing-alongs, pre-playoff escapades in Cabo, a public breakup with Jessica, celebrity golf tournaments, you name it, it’s all there on our boy’s ever-growing resume.
Everything, that is, but an NFL playoff victory.
So here’s my suggestion to Romo — and if he can ignore Parcells, just watch how quickly he dismisses ol’ Jim Bob here — with the first training camp practice scheduled Wednesday afternoon: Be prepared to work harder than you’ve ever worked in your life.
It may still be the same old Camp Cupcake for everybody else, but Romo has too many fences to mend, too many minds to change, too much perception to shake up to glide through camp wearing that happy-go-lucky smile and skipping along with that zippity-do-da attitude he tends to affect so often.
He has to convince people, including his coaches and teammates, that football is the most important thing in the world to him.
That’s not going to be easy, but it is the task in front of him and, if he fails to meet that challenge, then we can etch his oft-quoted postgame speech after the Cowboys’ final game crash-landing in Philadelphia last December on his tombstone.
Let us review:
“I wake up tomorrow and keep living. You don’t deal with it. You just keep playing the game. It’s a fun game, and it’s enjoyable. We’re going to try to win next year. We’re going to try and get back in the playoffs, and we’re going to try to win a Super Bowl. If you don’t, OK. If you do, OK. I’ve had a lot of worse things happen to me than a loss in a sporting event, that’s for sure. If this is the worst thing that ever happens to me, then I’ll have lived a pretty good life.”
Change the word “living” in the first sentence to “playing,” as in off the field, and Romo may have written his own epitaph. But let’s hope not. Let’s hope he’s had time to reflect on those words and realize that as a life philosophy, they work fine. As the mantra of an NFL quarterback, they leave something to be desired.
Romo’s first order of business in San Antonio this summer is to win back the locker room. Those who believe there wasn’t a major split there last season — like Jerry Jones — are simply hiding their heads in the sand.
There are players who are convinced that Romo is behind Jones getting rid of Terrell Owens. Jerry practically said as much when he alluded to the Cowboys now being more “Romo-friendly” And while you or I might want to pin a medal on the guy responsible for T.O. no longer being in Dallas, there are players still shaking their heads and wondering how the Cowboys will make up for what he brought to the offense.
Romo also has to convince his coaches, the media and Cowboys fans that he’s not just about savoring the fringe benefits of being the quarterback of America’s Team. It’s not just about the starlet girlfriends, or the celebrity golf tournaments or the Hollywood lifestyle. Nothing wrong with those things as long as they come in the proper time.
First, though, comes taking the Cowboys deep into the playoffs and, eventually, back to the Super Bowl. First, for a change, comes football.
Let’s hope the “friend” who told “People” that Romo is “emotionally drained” wasn’t a friend at all. Let’s hope he or she was dead wrong because Romo needs to approach this training camp with dynamic and unquenchable energy. Don’t be bringing that “emotionally drained” crap to San Antonio.
Romo has, to quote Mr. Robert Frost, “promises to keep and miles to go” before he sleeps.
And for the next six months, at least, I don’t want to read a single peep in “People” or anywhere else about who that might be with.